Sunday, 10 March 2013

Out & About... Down House...

I forgot to mention during the half term I went to visit Down House in Kent, where Charles Darwin used to live when he wasn't travelling the world! There were many artifacts on the species he had discovered or noted in his journals as well as the theories he had on evolution and natural selection.

The house was beautiful in itself, I could have quite happily lived there too! And the garden's lovely, even though it was a cold day. As we were walking around a man who worked there told us a bit about the house and told us a funny story of when Darwin was staying there when he wasn't out voyaging, he would walk around the garden 3 times while thinking of his theories etc, and would place 3 stones on the path and take one away every time he passed. Sounds like a good idea! Except that his children would sneak up put the stones back when he had passed making his walk longer than what he had wanted. To be honest I probably would have done that too!

My favourite bit of the house was just at the top of the stairs, there was a cabinet full of taxidermy birds, butterflies, dragonflies and other insects. The colours were beautiful, although because of it being so old, you had to look in with a torch to not damage the objects from constant lights being on them. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures either of inside the house.

The visit was very educational and I would highly recommend it! If you like history, science, animals etc or just want to learn something new.